Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art.

There are times when you just get down, you feel like nobody likes you. We're in high school forever. It's just what we do with it.

The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco.

The true snob never rests; there is always a higher goal to attain, and there are, by the same token, always more and more people to look down upon.

A lady is nothing very specific. One man's lady is another man's woman; sometimes, one man's lady is another man's wife. Definitions overlap but they almost never coincide.

It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.

The shaping of taste is essentially the science of merchandising, whether of detergents or cars or books or objects of fine and decorative art.